Things that make you say Hmmmm.......
A Brief History of The Imminent Threat Canard
Al Gore September 23, 2002
President Bush now asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi October 3, 2002
"As the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I have seen no evidence or intelligence that suggests that Iraq indeed poses an imminent threat to our nation. If the Administration has that information, they have not shared it with the Congress.
(It's fair to assume that if the administration did not share such information with the House Intelligence Committee, it is because the administration was not trying to tell Congress that Iraq posed an imminent threat)
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz December 6, 2002
Some people said [during the Cuban Missile Crisis] that Kennedy should have waited until the threat was imminent. We hear that again today. But we cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent. The notion that we can do so assumes that we will know when the threat is imminent. That wasn't true even when the United States was presented with the very obvious threat of Soviet missiles in Cuba. As President Kennedy said 40 years ago, "We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril." If that was true in 1962, facing a threat that was comparatively easy to see, how much more true is it today against threats developed by terrorists who use the freedom of democratic societies to plot and plan in our midst in secret.
Stop and think for a moment. Just when did the attacks of September 11 become imminent? Certainly they were imminent on September 10, although we didn't know it. In fact, the September 11 terrorists established themselves in the United States long before that date - many months or even a couple of years earlier. Anyone who believes that we can wait until we have certain knowledge that attacks are imminent has failed to connect the dots that took us to September 11.
President George W Bush, State of the Union speech January 28, 2003
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Senator Edward Kennedy January 28, 2003 [in reaction to the State of the Union speech]
[The President] did not make a persuasive case that the threat is imminent and that war is the only alternative
New York Times on the State of the Union, January 29, 2003 [archive only]
The heart of Mr. Bush's argument, however, is that America and the world cannot afford to wait until it is clear that Iraq will attack America, or its allies.
''Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent,'' he said, a clear reference to European nations that argue that Mr. Hussein is contained.
Los Angeles Times January 29, 2003
THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS; Bush Calls Iraq Imminent Threat
The above front-page headline in the L.A. Times is the earliest media report that I can find which claims that the administration called Iraq an imminent threat.
San Francisco Chronicle February 6, 2003
For all the damning evidence of Hussein's tyranny and evil ambitions -- neither of which has been in doubt since the Persian Gulf War -- Powell did not show that Iraq amounted to an imminent threat to the United States.
Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times March 4, 2003
The second lie was that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction represent an imminent threat to U.S. security.
Paul Krugman in the New York Times June 3, 2003
The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than the Iran-contra affair. Indeed, the idea that Americans were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer June 5, 2003
The justification for going to war against Iraq was the imminent threat its weapons of mass destruction posed to the safety and security of Americans.
San Francisco Chronicle July 15, 2003
THE WHITE HOUSE has told us "to move on" and forget that the president used questionable evidence to persuade Congress that Iraq's nuclear weapons program represented an imminent threat to our national security.
Washington Post August 10, 2003
The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support.
Senator Edward Kennedy September 18, 2003
"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud,"
Washington Post October 3, 2003
...when it comes to Iraq and the aim of transforming the Middle East, this administration will say and do just about anything to get its way.
One day it's the imminent threat from Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction...
So there you have it a nutshell. The administration was criticized before the war for not making a case that Iraq was an imminent threat, denied at that time that war was based on the supposition of an imminent threat, and was criticized after the war for having lied that Iraq was an imminent threat.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 21, 2003 07:00 AM
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